The researchers then looked at the effect of drugs including alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, nicotine and opioids over three years.<\/p>\n
The study found a 50% lower death rate and 40% lower overdose rate for users with addiction. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
For veterans who already had a drug addiction, taking GLP-1s was linked to a 50% lower rate of death and a 40% lower rate of overdose.<\/p>\n
The rate of emergency department visits was more than 30% lower, while hospital admissions and suicidal thoughts or attempts were down by a quarter.<\/p>\n
Among veterans with no history of drug addiction, taking GLP-1s was linked with a 14% lower risk of developing one.<\/p>\n
Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St Louis and the study\u2019s senior author, told AFP it was \u201cquite a surprise\u201d how many substance-use disorders the GLP-1s appeared to prevent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe effect was not confined to one substance, it was evident across the board for all addictive substances,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n
The research is observational, so cannot directly prove that the GLP-1s caused the results seen in the study.<\/p>\n
And exactly how these appetite-suppressing drugs could fight addiction remains unclear. <\/p>\n
However, there have been suggestions they could have an impact on how our brains reward certain behaviours.<\/p>\n
The researchers also warned that the participants were mostly older white men \u2013 though the results appeared consistent for women as well.<\/p>\n
Fares Qeadan, a biostatistics expert at Loyola University Chicago not involved in the research, said the \u201cimplications are pragmatic rather than revolutionary\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolicymakers should therefore avoid premature \u2018Ozempic for addiction\u2019 narratives,\u201d Qeadan said in a linked editorial in the BMJ.<\/p>\n
And even if clinical trials confirm these drugs are effective against addiction, they are expensive and not available equally to all countries, he added.<\/p>\n
-Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The researchers then looked at the effect of drugs including alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, nicotine and opioids over three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[579,20784,20926,634,3401,1757,71,29163,134,3242,7055,2513,524,111,139,69,1118,7192,312,28797,9939,383,9100,2215,4758,61,1865,9938,46960],"class_list":{"0":"post-313741","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-addiction","9":"tag-alcohol","10":"tag-cocaine","11":"tag-death","12":"tag-drug","13":"tag-drugs","14":"tag-from","15":"tag-generation","16":"tag-health","17":"tag-large","18":"tag-linked","19":"tag-lower","20":"tag-medication","21":"tag-new-zealand","22":"tag-newzealand","23":"tag-nz","24":"tag-of","25":"tag-risk","26":"tag-says","27":"tag-significantly","28":"tag-states","29":"tag-study","30":"tag-such","31":"tag-suggested","32":"tag-taking","33":"tag-to","34":"tag-today","35":"tag-united","36":"tag-weightloss"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}